Jess 1-28-07

Ciao! Bonjour!

Haha, getting into my French practice for this upcoming Sunday. Geez have I had a lot of troubles with this upcoming trip. First we tried to pay for our Paris accomodations by Paypal but since I put my permanent billing address in the United States (which it is) and then the money transfer request came out of Italy, they blocked the account. Which meant that I had to email them twice with no response, and then call them through an international calling card to explain myself. Eventually they unblocked my Paypal account but they also reversed my money transfer. However, since they reversed my transfer the money has not made it back into my account, or so says my online banking. So, I made many calls today to figure out where it went. I called Paypal, who had me on hold for 20 minutes, to find out that they claim they sent the money back and to call my credit card (which is actually a debit card) to find out what happened. So then I call People's "Mastermoney" service and they tell me that it usually takes a few days for the money to be returned from my card to my bank account, and to keep checking back. So currently I am nearly $1,400 short, which is apparently I hope floating in cyber space somewhere waiting to go back into my bank account.

In the meantime I have been in constant contact with a very patient French landlord trying to figure out other possibilities of payment and how he will get the security deposit (300 E) back to me since we leave early in the morning that Sunday and he will be away on vacation until the early afternoon the same day. So I think it will now be done by bank transfer, if hopefully he can figure that out because American banks don't have IBAN numbers like the rest of Europe; or if not we will get it back via Paypal, since I do have the ability to receive money that way. If there is one good thing out of all of this it is that my French is getting good exercise because I have been sending him emails in French for the sake of ease, since it is much easier to understand perfect French than it is imperfect English. Luckily if anything goes horribly wrong this setup was done through a third party rental website so I can complain to them if things go awry on my money return.

So other than taking my Italian test today, which was pretty easy, I've been ripping my hair out over this whole thing and wasting nearly 15 E just calling all the American companies all day. But hopefully everything will work out and I'm sure that Paris will be great. Hey, if there is anything that my psychology classes have taught me it is that things you work for harder are, in the end, more rewarding (Cognitive Dissonance Theory) -- so if this is the case Paris is going to be the trip of my life! I've been researching on places to go and I think we can get museum passes for several of the different museums, like the Louvre, d'Orsay, Picasso, even the catacombs, so once this is finally all settled I can just relax and enjoy the week.

Well, best to all. Miss you tons! Midterms are over!

Jess

P.S. to all who have suggested paintings for my next project, yes please do send the photos!